I met Robert Frank during the... For years, I thought I met him for the first time during the filming of Pull My Daisy, I don't know why because it was such a monumental event, I think that film is. But I met him actually when I'm now, during this period, that is when I'm talking... this is end of 2003 somewhere, Fall. Fall or end of September. I'm looking through my old notebooks and calendars and discovered that the mind, you know, forgets things that calendars retain... the entries and notes that I had met already Robert Frank like, about two or three years earlier before that.

He came from... very shortly after he came from Switzerland, he moved to... he was doing helping on a film Lou Clyde Stouman? Stouman? Stouman? Was making a film on photographs like that film reports that's ten-minute-long segment on Weston, on Weegee, and Robert Frank was working with Weston at that time and he then Lou involved him to help him on Weegee in New York, etc. So I met him very briefly after that film was finished in New York to Stouman's wife, Hanelore Haan, they sort of split around that time and she moved to New York and she knew Robert Frank, so it was Hanelore Haan Stouman who introduced me to Robert Frank. And then I did not see him, you know, very often, but beginning... I saw more of Robert the beginning of filming of Pull My Daisy. I was not there during the Jack Kerouac's improvisations for the soundtrack and we... we continued and when he was editing Pull My Daisy, I was editing my first film, Guns of the Trees. Through the years I... another incredible you know person, very, very, very different from any other. I would say that maybe he is the most from all my friends of that period was and remains the most humble and sometimes really underestimated, not underestimating. I think he knows what he's doing and what's all about but he does not want to be, you know, talked about, presented. He wants to be totally invisible, totally invisible and not to stay in the recognised higher society. I mean, let's face it; everybody would like to have him, you know, to... for dinner or meetings and why he didn't just come. No, he has been... he prefers to be on the Bowery which... or totally like part of the crowd of the lowest, really. And he sympathises with the with the sort of lower depths and... yes, I'm talking more or less about Robert as in real life. Of course that goes into his work, his photography. And he sees, you know, you can... it's one if the people that you you can't... he sees so you can see that he sees everything very directly, very there to the to the very bottom, though it's like when you see his you know, it's all you know, he's... he's open and hidden, he's very, very defaced Robert as a person. Very, very open, very. Very open. But there is also, like, he's like a rock there. It's... you cannot touch, you cannot budge, he's there. Like a rock. In any case we have been, we remain very good friends. Actually, so much that a year ago he had a foundation and he, you know, he used to help some people who needed money but it, you know, takes time and it's a nuisance so he decided to close it and whatever there was he gave to Anthology Film Archives to start an endowment. So thanks to Robert, Anthology has now $250,000 endowment, beginning the seed of the endowment. Robert Frank. I bend my head to you.